Guillermo Díaz on His LAW & ORDER: SPECIAL VICTIMS UNIT Return and New ABC Comedy

ABC WINTER TCA 2020 – Talent and executives enjoy the ABC All-Star Party on Wednesday, January 8, as part of the ABC Winter TCA 2020, at The Langham Huntington Hotel in Pasadena, CA. (ABC/John Salangsang)GUILLERMO DIAZ

Guillermo Díaz returned to LAW & ORDER: SPECIAL VICTIMS UNIT for 2019’s “Murdered at a Bad Address,” seven years after his last experience on the series (as a different character), and the journey is not quite over: the episode was nominated for a GLAAD award, for Outstanding Individual Episode (in a series w/o a regular LGBTQ character).

Díaz, who found out about the episode’s nomination via Twitter, played Carlos in the hour, a wrongfully imprisoned man who kept quiet about his alibi to prevent himself from being outed. (The present-day investigation into another attack eventually cleared him and Carlos was able to go free by the end of the hour.)

“It’s really special for me, because I’m a gay man,” Díaz says of the guest spot. “It’s wonderful. I feel just lucky and blessed that SVU asked me to do this episode. It’s based on an actual story that happened; super sad and tragic: a gay man was falsely accused of a crime and it took 16 years, I believe, before he was exonerated…[but] I feel super thrilled and excited about the nomination.”

The actor’s next project is decidedly lighter: the new ABC family comedy UNITED WE FALL. (Díaz plays Chuy, the brother to Christina Vidal Mitchell’s Jo.)

“Drama for me is so easy,” Díaz says. “It’s all about tapping into your emotions. But comedy is is mathematical. For me, the hardest thing has been my nerves—getting over being in front of a live audience. It’s like doing a play every single week.”

“Doing [the tapings] live brings something out in your performance that is other sort other level,” he continues. “It makes you want to perform harder and be better. So I feel like it’s actually made me better having the audience there…And also having like people like [costars] Will Sasso and Jane Curtain on the show. It’s like a comedy acting class every time I’m rehearsing or acting with them.”